AIDC project number: 1803
Panos Prevedouros
Guohui Zhang
CSET and University of Hawai'i - Manoa
The transportation safety needs of Hawaiians and other minorities in Hawaii have not been addressed in the past. As a result, very little is known about them. In the first year of research we used aggregate data from FARS, Trauma Registry and other resources to summarize conditions in the state of Hawaii and at specific RITI areas of the state (Waianae, Waimanalo and the Big Island.) We also reached out to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), the Bishop Estate which has been established to provide education to Hawaiians, the UH Manoa Native Hawaiian Affairs Specialist at the Chancellor’s office and the Native Hawaiian Science Engineering and Mathematics Program (NHSEMP )at the University of Hawaii (UH). Recently traffic safety has become a top issue on Hawaii; it may be a statistical abnormality or an early manifestation of distracted driving: Pedestrian fatalities in the first three months of 2018 reached 16 in Hawaii, which averages 26 fatalities per year based on our Quick Facts 2014-2016 analysis. (Only 23.5% of the year has gone by, but 61.5% of the historical pedestrian number of fatalities has occurred.) There is renewed urgency in the state on the issue of traffic safety equity between motorists and pedestrians.
In year 2 of CSET we propose to study two specific transportation facets of Hawaiians, part-Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders: Their driving behavior by using a driving simulator and their traffic safety perceptions by using a detailed, computer based survey.
